So, after three No. 1 albums — including her 2004 five-times-platinum debut “Here for the Party” — Gretchen Wilson came down. Hard.

The tumble started just a year and a half after her five-week No. 1 “Redneck Woman.” The gold-selling “All Jacked Up,” the lead single from her second album, topped out at No. 8 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in 2005. To date, it is Wilson’s last Top 10 hit.

“I’ve seen her struggle with it and on some days, really struggle with it,” says longtime booking agent Greg Oswald. “Most artists are in denial on some level about (their dwindling popularity), and that’s OK. It’s a hard thing to keep perspective on. Sometimes you say … ‘I can’t do it anymore. You’re orbiting when you need to get to earth, buddy.’ But she got to earth plenty fast.”

And when she did, Wilson took control — of almost every aspect of her career.

“She just paid attention, and it turns out, she’s pretty smart,” Oswald says. “That’s an understatement. She’s very smart. She watched who was making what and who did what … and (she was) looking around and going, ‘I’m changing this.’ ”

Gretchen Wilson (photo: John Partipilo/The Tennessean)

Today, the self-managed and self-dubbed Redneck Woman not only makes the music, but also engineers her albums, produces them, records them with her touring band in her home studio, releases them on her own Redneck Records label, where she also serves as her own A&R team and art department. And she decides when the music is coming out.

This year, Wilson plans to release three albums on Redneck Records. “Right On Time,” a diverse country-leaning album, came out this spring. “Under the Covers,” a collection of ’70s rock covers, came out at the end of May, and Wilson has a Christmas project due in stores later this year.

“I’ll be putting out more music this year than I did in the first three years of my career,” Wilson said, seated at her kitchen table in her new-to-her Wilson County home. The sprawling house sits amid rolling hills surrounded by a wooded area. There are hundreds of deer tracks in her front yard, and Wilson says with a laugh that the animals are so brave they chase her back into the house.

Wilson sold her expansive Wilson County farm, which served as home to many of her family members, at the end of 2011, following the death of her beloved Uncle Vern Heuer. Her family scattered, moving to different parts of the county.

When Wilson found her new home, it didn’t have room for her recording studio. One had to be built. During that time, her equipment remained in storage.

“It took a long time to get everything set up and hooked back up and get all of the rattles out,” she says. “But, boy, when we did get it up and going, we had a lot to do. I guess we had it all bottled up inside of us.”

Hard lessons

That music would never have made it to the marketplace in the same time span — at least not three albums’ worth — if Wilson was still signed to a major record label. On the heels of Wilson’s initial success, her next two albums were released about 18 months apart, a move then-label chairman Joe Galante admitted was too much in that time frame.

Wilson and her team intensified the search for songs for her fourth album on the label, but when it wasn’t released a full year after its initial release date, Wilson parted ways with Sony Music Nashville.

“I had to be a man in those meetings in order to win my freedom back, otherwise Gretchen Wilson would not be making music right now. Gretchen Wilson would be sitting on a shelf because that’s the way those contracts work,” she says.

Wilson goes as far as to say that she wishes she had never signed a recording contract with a major record label and that she turned down a few before she finally — driven by fear of her age — inked the deal with then-Sony Music Nashville president John Grady. She was approaching 30.

“You hit 30 and you hear the rumors, ‘30 is too old,’ ” she says. “ ‘You’re not going to make it.’ And that’s a horrible thing to think, and it doesn’t happen that way for men.”

(Photo: John Partipilo/The Tennessean)

Instead, the singer wishes she had used her own money to build an underground following and attempted to grow her career from there. She knows that probably would not have led to a debut album that sold 5 million copies, which made it easier to start her own record label.

But she also refuses to look back with regret.

“I’m glad I went through all the things I went through, and I learned a lot from that experience,” she says.

As for the fame that dissipated with the album sales, she says she doesn’t miss that these days, either.

“People are still calling,” she says. “I don’t worry about that. I don’t measure my success based on how many people want to talk to me. I really don’t. I measure my success on whether or not I’m sleeping well at night.”

She’s having no problem in that area. She’s working daily to get her songs back on country radio, and when she talks about turning Redneck Records into a success, making money isn’t her only goal.

“I’m in it to be able to make more records,” she says. “As long as I can sell enough records to make more records, I have won.”

Proving ground

And as a woman, she’s after respect in the male-dominated music industry. She started the label with her own money, something she proudly explains that most of the other artists who claim ownership of a record label didn’t do. Instead, many of her peers opt to team up with a major label for added funding and support. In her opinion, that’s the same thing as being under a contract and having someone else call the shots.

“I may as well have stayed at Sony,” she says. “Everyone is like, ‘Why would you want to go out and take out a loan and finance something that you can’t guarantee?’ And I’m like, ‘This is what I am and this is what I do. If I’m going to fail at it, I’m going to be the one to blame.’ This time around, it’s all on my shoulders, and I’m OK with that, because the only one I have to argue with is myself.”

Wilson wants to use the label to prove herself all over again and as more than a Grammy award-winning singer. She wants to gain respect in Nashville as a producer and label head, so if and when Redneck Records starts working with other artists, she’ll be able to help launch their careers.

“I’m not just fighting for me and Redneck Records,” she says. “I’m fighting for women in these roles. A woman can be a president of a record company. A woman can produce a record. A woman can engineer a record. A woman can put the damn thing together, and a woman can sell it. This year is about proving that, even if we don’t break charts. As a female, the day that I find a very talented new artist that I want to walk into Warner Bros. or Sony or Curb … (I want to) be taken seriously.”

Wilson has at least one dedicated, flag-waving supporter in her former label head Grady, who now runs the Nashville office of Crush Management.

“She is a world-class singer, with the heart of a lion, and her head is as hard as a cast-iron pan,” he says. “She is like arguing with a parking brake. She is Cash or Haggard. She will always be an important part of country music.”

'Mom' is hardest, most rewarding job

When Gretchen Wilson isn’t in the recording studio or handling the day-to-day business of Redneck Records, she’s just Mom. In fact, she tailors her daily schedule around her mommy duties and not the other way around.

Wilson drives daughter Grace, 12, to school every day, comes home and feeds her dogs, and then retreats to her office until it’s time to pick Grace up at 3. Then she says she walks out of her office and is back in “mommy mode.”

But being a good mother to her preteen is even harder than running her record label, Wilson says.

“I think being a mom is the hardest job in the world,” she says. “Get rid of the computers in your house now or be prepared to have all the talks about everything you never thought you’d have to talk to your kids about. Do it a lot earlier than you thought you were going to have to do it. There’s a wealth of information on there, and it’s pure evil if it wants to be.”

Wilson also isn’t a fan of prime-time advertising on television.

“When you can’t watch television at 7 o’clock without seeing a woman eating a hamburger like she’s having sex with it on a commercial, you already have to sit there and explain to your daughter every day that that’s not what you should aspire to be,” she says. “I know it looks like it ... but that’s not what a woman is made of.”

If you’re lucky, Wilson says, your kids will ask questions about what they see online and on TV.

“You have to be able to talk to your kids about stuff or you better be OK with them getting all of their information and basing everything they know on what other people have said,” she says. “It’s there and everyone else is telling your kid stuff … and it’s happening really early.”

As for Grace, Wilson says she’s thriving in spite of everything kids and parents are faced with today. She’s in drama at school, and Wilson says she’s “very proud.”

“She’s like every other 12-year-old, going on 16, making me worry all the time, wondering what’s going on in her head,” Wilson says. “She’s a very brilliant, beautiful little girl. She’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”